 |
| Ms Joyce Pogla, course advisor of the Literature and English Communication Strand, signing on new students for the 2013 academic year. |
The number of fresh
intake of literature and English communication students at the University of
Papua New Guinea has fallen to the lowest since the 1980s. This was noted at
the start of this year’s academic year when the university’s School of
Humanities and Social Sciences met to welcome its new students in its
orientation program.
There may have been a
lot more candidates wishing to apply but these might not have done so due to
various complications encountered at their respective schools throughout the
country.
Nonetheless, the
Executive Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Betty
Lovai, said a few good things to these new students and many would appreciate
her words of wisdom.
Their new life for four
years at the university, the Dean had pointed out then, would prove all the
more testing. They were at a place away from home and parents, she further
stressed, to become mature adults in scholarship and learning. It meant reading
as much as they could not so much to digest books as books or literature as
literature, as to become critical thinkers themselves. Their expertise, their
diligence in scholarship and learning was what was needed to make Papua New
Guinea adjust itself to the fast changing times that we live in.
An hour after the
Dean’s address students of various strands within the School of Humanities and
Social Sciences took leave for much more informal meetings with their lecturers
and tutors. It was then that the literature and English communication staff as
a strand discovered they had only seven new students present there for them to
meet.
At first they were
shocked. The staff outnumbered their students by more than half, it seemed.
And yet this is the
largest strand within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences boasting,
economically speaking that is, of managing more than a thousand students in its
compulsory courses. Students from virtually all of the schools of the
university come to do these compulsory courses as a necessary requirement to
graduate at all after four years of study.
And this year the selectors would only provide the strand with seven new
students?
Over the next few
weeks, however, it was discovered that literature and English, as a strand, had
in fact seven non-school leavers, approximately fifteen continuing students and
seventeen school leavers as its fresh intake. That balanced things out a bit,
as it were.
But that should not
mean the strand may now recoil to its comfort zone of the sublime and beautiful
in scholarship as the issue at heart of our article here is to point in the
direction of how much this strand has been ignored over the years.
To start off with, the
strand has been denied a strand leader over the Christmas-New Year break.
Financially speaking that would be a crucial oversight on the part of the
strand’s superiors as administrators. It does not matter what measures are
taken in these cost-saving exercises, so-called, as the intriguing factor noted
here was that a whole strand lacked any sense of leadership at a time when all
decisions pertaining to finance and expenditure across the board would mean
denying that very strand any participation at all in that process of decision
making.
The outcome to this was
simple. For every staff member of the strand returning to duty, it became a norm
and the usual knowledge that the whole school was broke, there was no money
left for purchases of new equipment and staff were thus required to buy their
own computers and stationery to teach at all.
The second denial noted
was that none of the staff of the Literature and English Communication Strand
was required to teach any of the strand’s external courses during Lahara
(October 2012 to January 2013). The argument? Too much money goes to Literature
and English. Let’s give the other strands a chance.
It might not be
surprising to hear next that the strand itself might be shelved in preference
to other service-oriented strands, whatever that may be. This is by no means an
act of disrespect to the superiors by pointing out these little details here,
but it strikes one as odd that Literature and English, the largest of strands
within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, would be singled out as
something of an unnecessary flaw within the consciousness of a premier
institution of higher learning such as UPNG.
While the number of its
student population dwindles away to less than those of the 1980s the strand
still retains its status as the provider of the sort of learning proved wiser
in so many respects, starting from the country’s pre-Independence era. That
every student that comes out of this strand does something extraordinary often
in favour of humanity out there, in the free wide world.
A quick look at class
distributions of students doing literature this semester reveals the following:
17 in Literary Criticism, considered the strand’s most boring course
coordinated by Storyboard himself; 11 in Literature, Nation and Culture, also a
Storyboard course; 57 in Literature and Politics coordinated by Dr Steven
Winduo; and 3 in Special Topics of Storyboard’s and members of staff.
The strand considers
Literature and Politics its heart beat that makes the university itself tick as
the premier institution of higher learning within the Pacific region. In
bringing a review of the course text book of this course called “Transitions
and Transformations: Literature, Politics and Culture in Papua New Guinea” to
appear on these pages shortly perhaps the reader will that way be given the
opportunity of knowing how vital Literature and English Communication is in
UPNG.
This year the strand has approximately 39
majors on record. It depends on how that number performs during the course of
the four-year BA in Literature and English Communication program. The number
may be less come graduation day. But even that small number should suffice in
churning out what should rightly be considered the Spartans of PNG Literature.
